Top Earners in Nonprofit Health Care By Michael Randall

To most people, the terms “nonprofit” or “not-for-profit” imply a bare-bones operation. There are hundreds of them around here: a couple of paid staffers and a bunch of volunteers working out of a cheaply rented storefront on a shoestring budget, trying to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless or give inner-city kids an alternative to hanging out on the streets.

But not-for-profits also include organizations with multimillion-dollar budgets and executives who pull down six-figure salaries. This is especially true in the hospital and health-care fields.

Among the Record’s findings:

• The number of six-figure salaries in the local nonprofit sector has more than doubled in the past four years. A Record survey in 2003 found 91 local nonprofit staffers pulling down compensation of $100,000 or more. In 2007, the number of nonprofit workers in that income bracket grew to 206.
  
• Locally, 648 people earned anywhere from $50 a year as a vice president of a volunteer fire department to $655,260 paid to Donna McAleer as the CEO of the Goshen-based chain of Elant nursing homes in 2007, the most recent year for which full details were available.
  
• The top of the local list is dominated by hospital and health-care executives and physicians. Eight of the top 10, 18 of the top 20 and nearly three-quarters of the top 100 work in some capacity in health care.
  
• A recently completed Internal Revenue Service study of nonprofit hospitals found the average total compensation for top managers was $490,000. Based on that figure, three local hospital heads were above average in 2007.

Source: Times Herald-Record